


Clarity/Sight

by veritascara



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: A New Dawn - John Jackson Miller, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Fix-it, Established Relationship, Everybody Lives, F/M, Fix-It, Hopeful Ending, Kalikori, Kanan Lives, Pregnancy, Pure and Unadulterated Wish Fulfillment, S4E10: Jedi Night, S4E11: Dume, space married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-27 09:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13877577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritascara/pseuds/veritascara
Summary: Separate, they’ve both been blind. But together, they can truly see.A fix-it fic in two parts for the episodes Jedi Night and Dume.





	1. Clarity

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally born out of a dissatisfaction with some of the dialogue in these episodes (and the implications it gave regarding Kanan and Hera’s relationship), and it spiraled out of control from there. Because why go halfway when you can just fix everything?
> 
> Many thanks to uhura_ismylastname for letting me rope her into being my beta!
> 
> Spoilers apply through the series finale. The second (and substantially longer) portion of this fic is completed, and I plan to post it this weekend. Enjoy!

_So many steps. So far._

_But not far at all. Almost there._

Hera climbed the last couple steps of the staircase, grateful for Kanan’s steadying arms around her as she reached the top of the fuel pod. Her mind had cleared significantly, the effect of the truth serum waning from its peak, but she was still weaker than she ought to be, what little energy she had now drained after climbing the hundreds of rungs to the top, and her mind still felt muddied by a light haze—like flying through the upper layers of clouds.

A slight breeze brushed over her face, lifting the veil of fog from her mind a little more, and bringing back to the forefront the thoughts that had kept her steady through Pryce’s torture, when the never-ending shocks of electricity had burned away all the clutter, leaving only what truly mattered.

_Kanan. Her rock. Kanan, who kept her feet on the ground while her mind was in the sky._

He’d pressed on ahead of her.

_Kanan, here in front of her now. Real. But just beyond her reach._

Maybe her mind wasn’t as clear as she wished. That couldn’t be helped.

“Kanan!”

He’d reached the center of the dome, but at her call, he stopped and faced her.

“I know what to say now.” Hera stepped closer, paused for a moment, and swallowed hard. Words fled her brain faster than she could think them, and she fought to catch the ones that were just right.

“I’m sorry.”

Confusion flickered across his face. Whatever he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t it. But it passed in an instant, and he chuckled. “I’d do this every day for you. If I had to.”

Hera wrapped her arms tight around her and looked away. “No. Not about that. I mean . . . I’m sorry you had to risk it, but no, I’m sorry I took you for granted, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more, because I should have.” She crossed the distance between them, and dared to raise her eyes to his face. She pressed a hand to his chest. Her voice grew soft. “I love you.”

Kanan’s face lit up, a beacon in the surrounding blackness, and his shoulders relaxed as if a great weight had been lifted from them. His arms opened and welcomed her in, the solidity of his chest against her cheek and arms surrounding her dredging up wisps of a thousand memories.

 _Warmth_. _Home._

“I love you too,” he replied. “Always have.”

_Peace. Hope._

Hera smiled against his chest and drew her arms around him still tighter, startled out of her reverie when Kanan suddenly stiffened against her. The blades of a gunship replaced the music of his heartbeat in her ear.

“Come on, we’ve got to move.” His voice was urgent, firm. He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the ship, without waiting for it to land. There was Sabine at the controls, and there was Ezra in the bay, his face grim.

A fresh sense of foreboding shot through her. _They weren’t safe yet. How could she have forgotten?_ She longed to simply will the medication’s dampening effects away.

“Let’s move, let’s move!” Ezra yelled ahead of her.

The urgency blossomed to panic within her, but her feet moved as if they were made of lead. What could have been no more than a few steps seemed to stretch out before her like miles.

“Hurry!” Kanan urged, dragging her along.

Suddenly, he dropped her hand and her feet met nothing but air. Hera gasped and stiffened, but then the grating of the ship’s bay materialized under her feet and Ezra’s hands steadied her shoulders. Kanan jumped across an impossible distance behind her, the ship already lifting away.

“Go, go, go!” Ezra shouted, his face pale as ashes in the moonlight.

Somewhere in the distance Hera thought she heard the clang of walkers’ heavy footfalls.

“Where—” she started to ask as the ship jerked away, only to have her voice die in her throat.

_A red flash of gunfire. A roar of golden flames. Growing cracks in the surface of the dome, just meters below._

Kanan sprang towards the edge, and Hera’s heart lurched into her throat as horrifying visions of him throwing himself towards the blaze to save them danced across her imagination.

But Ezra grabbed his shoulder before he could.

“I’ve got to go!”

“No, Kanan. Push together!” Ezra shouted. Something wild in Kanan’s eyes cleared at that. Both men stretched out their arms, pitting their wills against the inferno. It raged in front of them, held at bay.

_Light and heat and burning and the Force._

The metal of the dome held. Fire belching from the blasted side.

_Burning. The Force._

_The man she loved—her past, her present, her future, her everything in the galaxy. Silhouetted black against the blinding light._

“Now!” Ezra shouted.

With an enormous lurch, the ship was suddenly flung backwards, and Hera hit the deck, unable to catch herself with her arms. An intense pain seared through her skull.

The world around her exploded into light. Her mind sank into black.


	2. Sight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of my fix-it fic. This chapter focuses on the episode Dume. Major spoilers for the end of the series apply to this chapter.
> 
> Thanks again to uhura_ismylastname for betaing this!

Kanan rolled over on the sleeping mat, and reached his arm towards the other side. His hand met only cold stone. A brief moment of panic tore through him before he stretched out his senses, and found the object of his anxiety just a few feet away. She knelt in front of the small stone table, where just the day before he’d set aside his mask and cut his hair. Preparing for the mission.

Preparing, he’d thought, for his death.

The mask had been unceremoniously tossed aside, and Hera’s kalikori stood in its place. The hair was nowhere to be found. Her hands worked with a small, unfamiliar wooden object, and her being radiated a level of peace and joy he wasn’t accustomed to.

“You’re finally awake,” Hera said, without turning. “Ezra came looking for you hours ago, said he needed to go meet someone. He also said you stayed awake the entire day and most of the night watching me sleep.”

Kanan sat up and ran his hands through his hair, still surprised by the shortness. “Uh, yeah, about that . . . What do you remember about what happened yesterday?”

Hera turned at his question and sighed. “A lot of it is a blur. Images and flashes of things. But a few things are very clear.” She paused a moment, and her voice turned accusatory, “You didn’t think I’d forget that you almost jumped out of that gunship to go fight back the fire alone, did you?”

“Maybe that wasn’t one of my brighter ideas.” Kanan chuckled. “Ezra was right. We were stronger together.”

“I also remember what I said,” Hera’s voice softened, “and I meant it—every word.”

“Hera, you don’t have to—“

“No, Kanan, it needs saying. I had a lot of time to think about this in Pryce’s office. I know I’m not always very good at it. It’s hard for me, but I will work to be better,” her last words were barely above a whisper, “for you.”

The mere mention of Pryce’s office and the state he’d found Hera in the night before made his blood begin to boil. Something of it must have shown on his face because Hera laughed a bit and held out her hand to him. “Come here.”

Kanan crawled the couple meters over to the low table and knelt, mirroring her position—their knees mere millimeters from touching. Hera’s hand grasped his own, the softness of her own ungloved fingers sliding across his callouses. She turned it palm up, and deposited the small object she’d been working on into it, wrapping his fingers around it.

He rotated the pyramid in his hands, his fingers dancing over the smooth surface to feel the delicate, etched lines marking its edges and faces, the slick bands of freshly dried paint. “What is this?” he asked, though a tiny part of him knew the answer. It was almost too much.

Hera released a deep breath she must have been holding. “It’s you.” Her gaze drifted from his face to the kalikori on her left, his right, and he followed with his own eyes, tracing the various shapes on it with the Force and feeling the weight of its history, of the many hands that had held it in the past, that had carved it and assembled it together, piece by piece, with love.

Kanan’s heart leapt at the confirmation.

“I don’t know how to ask this. There are words I’m supposed to say, things I’m supposed to do, but it’s been so long that I . . . I don’t really remember them, just a vague idea of what they are supposed to be.” She faced him again fully, and grasped both his hands in her own. “I spent years running away from both my past and my future. It’s hard to believe that your own future even exists when you’ve seen it torn apart before—when you’re afraid it might be torn away again.”

Her focus drifted back to the kalikori and trailed over two pieces in particular, one after the other, reminding Kanan that in all their years together there were still many things about her past she’d never told him.

And many things he’d never told her.

“Hera . . .”

“But then you almost lost me. And I almost lost you,” she continued hurriedly, tripping over her words. A surge of anxiety pulsed across their joined hands as she spoke, betraying just how difficult it was for her to get these words out.

“I can’t know how much more time we’ll have together. But you have always been there for me. And you—you are my family, Kanan. And I . . . I want us to always be family. Not just like we are, but . . . officially.” She nearly choked on the last word, and Kanan felt slightly guilty for relishing it.

_I thought you’d never ask. You said some of that last night, you know—glad it wasn’t just the drugs talking._ _Are you sure they aren’t still in your system now?_ A half dozen sarcastic remarks to lighten the mood flitted through Kanan’s mind, and before his mind could catch up, the most brazen one slipped out. “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I would think you were asking if I’d marry you.”

Hera gaped for a moment, and then laughed. The tension that had surrounded them like a heavy curtain shattered into a thousand motes of dust and dissipated into the air.

“Yes, love. I guess I am.”

“Well, you’re not the first, but you’ll definitely be the last,” he joked.

“I can only imagine,” Hera replied, unamused.

“So, uh, what do we need to do?”

“There really isn’t . . . much. We attach your piece to mine together, then say a couple lines. But are you sure?” She paused and took a deep breath, her hand tightening around his own. “On Ryloth, when the pieces are joined, they can never be taken apart again.”

“Hera—” He sobered, and his tone became serious. “I knew I would follow you anywhere from almost the moment I met you.”

_ Almost. Minus maybe a rotation or two. _

Hera nodded. Not for the first time, Kanan wished he could truly see Hera’s eyes again, to delve into their depths and read everything there she’d left unsaid, everything her fears still held her back from saying with her lips. But he would content himself with the feelings radiating from her, with all the words she had managed to get out that had lain bottled up inside for years on end.

When she found her voice again, she continued, this time their hands moving in unison to the kalikori to follow her direction, “Together we attach the charm to mine.” She matched the small pyramid to a rectangular piece on the left side with an unused link below it.

The piece snapped into place, their hands joined around it.

Something in the Force rippled, and he could almost hear a new future snap itself into place as a result.

“Then you say, ‘I join myself to you to be your family—”

“I join myself to you to be your family,” he echoed.

“As long as the world stands—”

“As long as the world stands.”

“May we never be broken.”

“May we never be broken,” he finished.

“Then I reply.” Her eyes bore into his own, the nervousness in her bearing fading quickly, replaced again with calm certainty. “I join you to myself to be my family. As long as the world stands, may we never be broken.”

Their fingers interlaced around the piece. A rich silence surrounded them, their own breathing the only sound in the cave, only the ancient glyphs on the walls as their witnesses. Wolves and loth cats and people of long ages past. How many years—millennia even—had they stood here watching? The permanence of stone in an impermanent world of burning grass.

Tentatively, Kanan reached his other hand up to Hera’s cheek, cradling it in his palm. She leaned into his touch and smiled against his hand. “I have one other thing I need to give you.”

He froze for a second, but then relaxed again as he remembered there was simply no way she could know—not yet.

“What now? A loth cat? A hot cup of caf? Or have you got something more energetic in mind?” he drawled.

Hera rolled her eyes. “Definitely better than a cat. You know how I feel about  _ those _ . A cup of caf does sound heavenly, but we’re low on supplies. And as much as you might like something much more energetic, we’re in an open cave, so all I’ve got for you is this.”

In one fluid motion, Hera leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, the force of her passion slamming into him like a tidal wave. He had no choice but to surrender, to let himself be carried away by the current. For she herself was a force of nature, and years of experience had taught her well how to bring him to his knees.

At the moment quite literally.

Her kiss was as bold as her confessions had been tentative. No shred of hesitation remained in her actions, and he followed her lead, kissing her back with fervor and wrapping his arms around her to pull her closer—the need to feel her pressed against him, to absorb her into his very being, as innate as needing oxygen in his lungs. He sighed with relief at the feel of her warmth flush against him as they rose up on their knees together, their lips and tongues continuing their exquisite, choreographed dance.

Rapidly, the world around him dissipated, his usual awareness contracting with each passing moment. The rolling grasslands, the towering mountains, the distant voices, even the cave itself ceased to exist in his mind, until all that remained of the galaxy was Hera and himself.

Hera, kissing him.

Hera, running her fingers through his shorn hair.

Hera, joy and hope and desperation rolling off her in such turbulent waves that he didn’t need the Force to feel the maelstrom of her emotions.

Instinctively, he poured his own back in response—anguish at her potential loss, adoration for everything she was and everything he knew she would be, and most of all love—deep, abiding love for the woman who had believed in him when he had long lost any belief in himself.

She always had believed. She always had loved. He could see that now.

He could see. Images blazed through his mind, sharper and more vibrantly colored than any memory he could conjure, and dizzying in their array. Glimpses of the past.

_ A woman in a cloak on a darkened street with a voice that surpassed any music he had ever heard before. _

_ “Shh. Don’t tell anyone.” _

_ Hera running ahead of him, hand intertwined with his as she dragged him along, the bright green of her lekku flying behind her as he dashed to keep up. _

_ Their small, but growing, chosen family, struggling to survive in the midst of war. _

_ “I have you.” _

Glimpses of possible futures.

_ A spark of something new and unique in all the galaxy. _

_ “He has hair! And it’s green!” _

_ The face of a small boy who has filled all his recent meditations. Blue eyes always turned towards the stars. _

_ Hands clasped together across the cockpit of the Ghost as something enormous blazes in the sky. _

_ “The war is over, love. We've won,” she says. He wraps his arms around her. _

_ “She’s beautiful.” _

_ Tiny, soft green lekku with rich, brown braids woven carefully around them. A mind and heart connected to the universe. _

_ “No, little one, reach out with your feelings not your hands. Like this, see?” _

_ “I see, Daddy.” _

_ Three small stones, suspended in the air. _

“Ow!” Hera’s sudden exclamation, punctuated with a burst of pain, yanked him out of the Force and back into the present, and he broke the kiss and jerked his hand away, realizing too late that he’d pressed it tight to the back of her head to pull her closer without thinking.

Her own hand flew up to the angry bruise he knew lay concealed under her cap, and she winced.

“Sorry about that. I got carried away,” he said sheepishly. “You all right?”

Hera nodded, taking a minute to collect herself. Her breathing was ragged and heavy, cheeks flushed and warm. She pressed one more quick kiss to his lips, then let her forehead rest against his. “Guess we’d better find ourselves a private location again soon.  _ After _ I’ve fully recovered from my concussion.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he teased.

“You’d better.”

“Hey, enough of that. Time to go.” Ezra’s voice and approach startled both of them.

“Ezra, you’re back!” Hera exclaimed.

“Yep, and you’ll never believe what I’ve brought. Come on, I want to show you.” He jerked his thumb towards the cave entrance behind him. He stood tall and radiated confidence, something of the boy he’d been before replaced overnight with the man he was rapidly becoming. A leader in his own right.

“Guess I’d better get everyone’s recon reports.” Hera sprang up, and Kanan followed suit. With one quick glance back at him and a small smile, she surrendered his hand and walked out of the cave. His own ached at the loss, but he could no sooner slow her down, concussion or no, than he could stop the wind itself. She held her head high, any weariness she must have still felt from the prior day’s events concealed, her indefatigable strength and hope carrying her onwards.

“Ezra.” Kanan placed his hand on the young man’s shoulder before he could exit likewise. “Thank you.”

Ezra nodded, his eyes acknowledging the wordless depths underlying his master’s thanks. Then he strode away.

For a moment, Kanan remained behind, letting the history of the place and the promise of the future, carved in wood and standing alone but not forgotten in the center of the space, permeate his being. The images he’d seen now floated just beyond his grasp, but the feelings they’d left remained, one burning brighter than all the rest—the feeling of something safely nestled away, a star in its nebula, minuscule, but exponentially dividing.

And that future was his to live.

Then Kanan walked out of the cave and into the breaking light of dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For more info on the theory I used regarding when Hera got pregnant with Jacen and when Kanan knew, see [this post on tumblr.](http://veritascara.tumblr.com/post/171741081188/jacen-syndulla-answers-to-all-the-big-questions)


End file.
